The Banner Saga

What is The Banner Saga?

One of the most visually arresting games in the world today, The Banner Saga is a starkly beautiful Viking epic. The game places a huge emphasis on narrative choice and consequence, its story punctuated by gruelling turn-based combat.

Building on Kickstarter success

Having crowdfunded over seven times its original $100,000 target, The Banner Saga was already a bonafide phenomenon. Plan of Attack and Stoic wanted to give something back to its already invested community so a concrete release date was the first port of call.

Telling the story of an epic saga

Prior to its full commercial release, Stoic used the multiplayer beta, The Banner Saga: Factions, to tweak its combat. With this aspect of the game already a known quantity Plan of Attack led with a video featurette exploring the story and its acute sense of choice. Having established this context, the team were then able to detail combat to a broader audience, skillfully outlining what players could expect in the finished game.

Richly thematic

Not every game needs interviews as part of its press campaign but The Banner Saga’s engaging story and difficult choices all but demanded it. We facilitated chats with key outlets, giving readers and viewers the chance to dig a little deeper.

Broadening horizons

When it came to reviews, Plan of Attack made a conscious effort to engage broader culture publications such as AV Club and Paste as well as newspapers like The Guardian because of the game’s strong emphasis on story. It paid off with The Banner Saga engaging a hugely broad audience.

Indie publisher Versus Evil and developer Stoic Studio were searching for a European agency to launch Kickstarter-funded The Banner Saga, an epic Viking RPG with a beautiful hand-animated art style. Plan of Attack hit the ground running, quickly organising online previews and developer interviews with over 150+ European outlets and bloggers. The review campaign went even larger with over 300 review codes seeded to European media, including every major gaming outlet that covers PC games. From international heavyweight print gaming giants such as EDGE, PC Gamer and Gamestar, to premier online portals including Rock Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer and VG247, national newspapers including The Guardian, The Times and Metro, and popular Youtube channels including Totalbiscuit.

With a metacritic score of 80%, The Banner Saga quickly established itself as 2014’s first critically acclaimed breakthrough indie debut IP and developers Stoic won “Best Start-up” at the Gamesindustry.biz Innovation Awards. In October 2014 the Plan of Attack team launched The Banner Saga on iOS, which according to Metacritic became the highest reviewed mobile game of 2014 with a metacritic of 92%.

Campaign Timeline

Plan of Attack began by announcing the release date of The Banner Saga with a trailer in November 2014, the news reported by 173 different online publications including Kotaku, Eurogamer, PCGamesN and 3D Juegos.

A new trailer, Stoic’s “Rough Guide To Travel” followed a week after the announcement, outlining the core systems at the heart of the game’s non-combat sections, securing 80 news stories in the process. A second tutorial video, the “Rough Guide To Combat Trailer” was released at the beginning of December further highlighting the mechanics players could expect in the game.

Plan of Attack began previewing The Banner Saga in November 2014 with previews and interviews published in December and January 2015. Notable content was secured at Eurogamer, Rock Paper Shotgun, VG247, Gamekult and Vandal. Rock Paper Shotgun, in their closing remarks, described The Banner Saga as “one of the most beautiful games I’ve played, not just in its style but in the craft that has gone into making that a reality. It’s challenging, mysterious and not quite like anything else.”

The Banner Saga launched on Steam on January 14th 2015 with 193 sites reporting on the news including Eurogamer Spain, PCGamesN, Playground, 3D Juegos, Everyeye and Gamestar. Reviews were garnered at every major outlet in video game media including: Kotaku, Giant Bomb, IGN, Gamespot, PC Gamer and Rock Paper Shotgun.Not only that, reviews were also secured at broader culture publications including The AV Club, Paste and Slant. Reviews also followed in major newspapers such as The Guardian and Metro.